I won't be the one to chase you
by ibuzoo
Summary: He didn't fall in love, he crashed into it like a drunk driver who couldn't wait for the light to turn green and perhaps no one will die, but she'll get hurt and he'll apologize with marks on her skin like it's never happened before.


**I won't be the one to chase you (but at the same time you're the heart tha****t I ****call home)**

**Prompt: **Jealousy

**Rating: **M

**Warnings: **Modern AU / College AU / Jealousy is a Beast that lives right under Tom's skin

**Word count: **1027

**Summary: **He didn't fall in love, he crashed into it like a drunk driver who couldn't wait for the light to turn green and perhaps no one will die, but she'll get hurt and he'll apologize with marks on her skin like it's never happened before.

**A/N: **There's a beast in Tom's veins called Jealousy and I think everyone knows how it is to be brutally jealous of someone. This one's also really short, sorry for that!

**Disclaimer: **This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros. Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

* * *

**o.**

He didn't fall in love, he crashed into it like a drunk driver who couldn't wait for the light to turn green and perhaps no one will die, but she'll get hurt and he'll apologize with marks on her skin like it's never happened before.

**i.**

Being with Hermione wasn't easy from the start. There were necessaries to consider her rules and Tom never wanted to bend down to her ideals of a pedestrian relationship, something that was never going be enough for a man living as far beyond the edge as himself. Her condition revolved around her freedom and ongoing friendship with Potter and the Redhead and Tom found it obnoxious to keep on tight on something, that dragged her down in the first place. The only condition on his part was rather humble, for he wanted her to belong to him whole, to belong to him solely. In the end they decided to keep their upcoming affair a secret and perhaps that's what bothered him in the first place.

_(for a man living in shadows and speaking lies as his moth__er's__ tongue, Tom wreathed against this with his whole body)_

**ii.**

It's possible that this isn't working, at least, not in the way it was supposed to.

Hermione with her ticking brain full of brilliance and wit brings him gifts in the language of books, and she gives him knowledge the way other women would give their body, her pride shaping her mouth with a spice called passion and Tom feels like it was something he was meant to possess all along.

_(he knows he was)_

This beautiful lioness of wits and calculations who always seemed to have an answer to his questions, who asked questions he didn't had the answer to right away, seemed sometimes so guileless it scared him and he lies awake while she sleeps tight against him, mumbling, her fists in his shirt and Tom wonders if he was ever ready to let her go again.

_(he knows he isn't)_

**iii.**

He observes her after classes in Oxford's aisles, speaking with the biology student which parents live in the nuthouse if Tom recalls rightly, and it drives something red _(or is it green?)_ in his eyes, something primeval so he can't think straight anymore. He clenches his fists and presses his rage behind closed teeth, fingers burying in the palms of his hand. He looks at Greyback and gives him a sign.

**iv.**

The boy will not die, not by all means.

Greyback will just beat him up a bit.

_(you can blame it on Hermione's good influence that he didn't sent him to death, but he would never confess this)_

**v.**

She bolts into their venue four hours later and the fire in her eyes sparks with every word she's spitting at his face, her temper a devotion that speaks to him in rhymes and all he wants to do is kiss her full lips and brush his thumbs across her red blushed cheeks. He does a second later to shut her up and her mouth is the sweetest sin he ever tasted.

**vi.**

He thinks the beast is sated after this, but he's wrong because the moment he sees her joking and laughing with Avery he can feel the carnivore rampaging right in his veins, thirsting for blood.

_(no one ever gets unscathed with him, there's always some kind of collateral damage but he wasn't ready to let her go)_

**vii.**

It can be disturbingly cruel to strip everything back from a person to see the raw truth as they truly are, the revelation of something no one ever wants to see but Tom knows she suspected it all along. It's intimate in some ways and sometimes he wishes he could peel back her skin and crawl beneath it, live in-between her ribs and her heart, where her blood is warm and every part of her belongs to him.

**viii.**

He doesn't understand Hermione's desperate clinging to her so called friends and why she wastes her precious time with them when she could be with him instead.

He doesn't send anyone after them though.

_(he leaves bruises and marks on her skin, silent witnesses to remind her where she belongs and the beast reminds him, that she shatters so easily these days)_

**ix.**

The jealous beast in his veins is omnipresent while loving Hermione, and it feels like a bloody love letter, something devastatingly focussed, something crazed and distracted. He let his fingertips bleed into the pages, read it out loud to the walls in his mind but he can't find a title to write on her marble skin.

Maybe he should call it nine, because it was the number of mornings he woke up beside her and asked himself what this feeling might be that blossomed up in his chest and made him feel like throwing up. Maybe he should call it nine, because it's the number of times he heard her name out of another's mouth before he said it himself.

_(his teeth rotten instantly)_

She's not the introduction, nor everything that comes after. She's the start, the middle, the end, the whole, the promise for more.

And he keeps reading.

_(some days everything sounds like his favorite book, some days everything sounds like her name and those days are the same)_

**x.**

He calls up his favorite independent bookshop and has them deliver a copy of 'Love Letters of Great Men' to her parents' house, and tells himself that he's only trying to drag his claws deeper into her.

**xi.**

Some nights, she holds him like the sea and his blood sings for her the same way as sailers do for the shore and the beast is painted on his eyelids, tickles under the tips of his fingers and for him it feels heavily masochistic, as if people will come from all around the world to watch him crashing into shreds.

When morning comes she'll cover the marks he left on her skin and leave, but he'll wait for her return.

He'll always be waiting for her.

_(it's not a promise, it's a curse)_


End file.
